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Blurb Review

This review is not sponsored by blurb. It is not even sanctioned by them. They don't even know I'm writing it. If they did they might send me a message saying something like, "Please don't review our products on your dumb blog. Thank you."

But we had a REALLY long (apparently boring) conversation at my brother's house today about where we all print our photo books and I really wished I had one of my books there to show off. So this post is mostly for Arlene and Faralee, who wanted to know if I was happy with my photo books.

I always order from Blurb. Ever since I found them I have used them. One of the best things about them is that they are all about self publishing books, so they don't charge as much for every page over 20 like most photo-book sites do.

My books are usually about 100 pages, and cost around $50.00 with the hard cover. I always wait for a sale, (I've signed up for their email list) so for my most recent book, including $4.99 shipping, I paid $47.39. It was 104 pages long. I assume that is a good price, but now that I think about it, I haven't really researched photo book pricing in several years, so who knows?

Let's look at it in detail, shall we? (I decided I didn't want you Yahoos knowing my last name.)

Aw what a charming family. Really good at smiling, that is what those people are.

This book was ordered in a hardback with an image wrap, meaning they print your image directly onto the book cover itself. It is super nice. Really my only complaint is that they always have a hard time getting the label on the spine centered.

But these are the sort of difficult, first world problems that we will just have to learn to deal with.

They have several photo templates available, or you can just drag and drop the pictures where you want them, then re-size them as needed. You can choose from several assortment of text and photo layouts, or you can put text boxes anywhere you want, use the fonts already installed on your computer, and just personalize the heck out of it.

I know they have some borders and patterned paper you can use for backgrounds, but I have never used them, so I can't tell you how cute they may or may not be. After years of hard-core scrapbooking I am perfectly contented with the simple, minimalist look of my pictures on a white background, and just some fonts for decor.

Their customer service is great too. I think their policy is that you have to notify them within 15 days if there is a problem with your book. I ordered the above book last year in November, and then wrapped it and put it under the Christmas tree without even looking at it. And then when Christmas rolled around and I finally did open it I found that about 20% of the fonts had printed all wonky, and some of the words weren't even legible.

I figured I had missed the "Error Notification Window" and so I just didn't worry about it, but it has always bugged me and finally last month I decided to order another copy of the book. I sent them an email first telling them what happened, wondering if it was just an error in printing, or if the font itself was a problem. They responded saying they were having a problem with some fonts at the time, but they had since corrected the problem, and then gave me a credit on my account that could be used to order a replacement book. That was nice.

So that is all I can think of. What else needs to be included for a thorough review? Beats me. This is all you are getting. Good night.